soba, home made [jatp]

I found out most recently that it was conceivable to make one own’s soba noodles at home! (Soba means buckwheat.) And hence embarked on the adventure on two consecutive weekends (one batch of noodles each!). As I like very much these particular noodles, having trouble finding manufactured ones around (the last ones I bought had no buckwheat flour content and were made in Hungary…). The recipe is awfully simple, since it consists in making a dough out of buckwheat and wheat flours, flattening it out (and again), and cutting thin noodles from the resulting folds. In practice, it does not work so well, from the dough crumbling when getting very thin (as buckwheat does not have the same adherence as wheat, missing the gluten component), to the folds sticking with one another when preparing to cut four or eight layers at a time. So far the results are more tagliatelle like than soba, but still eatable as is (especially for lunch at the office) and giving me a challenge to try next new techniques (like using hot water when making the dough).

Thank you for sharing your soba “uchi” experience. The photos look great to me.

A key ingredient I hear all the times in making Japanese foods is water. How great the water is for whatever they are making–sake, tofu, wasabi, soba, etc. So, you might also try different kinds of “mineral water” in your next “challenges”?

Dear Hiro, thank you so much for this input! I did not think about water, although I always pay attention to the milk I use for deserts. I will certainly try your suggestion of having bottled mineral water next time. Yesterday I used fairly warm tap water as I had read that heat would help in making the soba wheat stick together and it seemed to help indeed.
Kind regards
Christian

The point about water reminded me. EU is typically hard water, while Japan (and NA) is soft water. I remember when I was living in Paris, I tried boiling udon, but came out terrible because the texture was too slimy from the water melting the udon. I’d definitely check if the water changes how the soba comes out!